I closed my eyes, and I could see the Arabian Gulf just as I had left it that afternoon. The sun was still cruel at the edge of the desert, but the invading dust had settled, and everything had been swept clean. Hard daylight made the water look glassy and deceptively cool just beyond the salt-caked beach. There was no sign of the bombs being tossed somewhere beyond the sharp horizon. Still, it was a world at loggerheads with the heat.
I opened my eyes, touched my own reflection in the window, and waited for the present to overtake me. Time was different here. My mind tried to race to the tempo of the countryside slipping by—a sallow wasteland lapping at the window, making me forget, trying to make me sleep.
There were large stones scattered over the desert floor. Random boulders stood sentinel, like Lot’s wife turned to salt over and over again. Ghastly shapes looked on from a distance. Smooth stretches of sand flowed behind them and down the rippling valleys among the dunes, crisp against the sky. Moments became hours as the beige land rolled and tripped beneath the scrub. Gradually, the tired afternoon sun coaxed golden highlights and long, comfortable shadows from the underbrush.
A pair of shining, dark eyes appeared over the top of the seat in front, and smiled. They were too big for their tiny face, too beautiful. I winked playfully, first left then right. They laughed, and bounced out of sight, down into the muffled rhythm of the train.
A few moments of childish whimpering, and the eyes reappeared across the aisle. They belonged to a little girl dressed in taffeta and crinoline. She sat on the lap of a kindly old man. In his desert-soiled ghutra and thob—the shifting gingham head-cloth and Biblical white robe—he was Abraham playing across time with the new Hagar. She prodded the old Bedouin, and he pushed her gently, both of them toying and cooing.
“Ma tibghi hada?—don’t you want this?” His large, fleshy hand dangled a shiny bracelet before her eyes.
“La, la.” She pushed it away. But her dark eyes flashed coyly, and she began pulling gently at the teasing hand. “Illa, abgha, abgha...—I want it, I want it!”
“Narju intiba...!” The public address system spewed a flood of static and feedback into the coach. I straightened my back against the cool vinyl, and gathered my quilted jacket up off the seat. In spite of the stifling heat outside, the train’s air-conditioned comfort had turned to wintry cold.
Electrical sputtering dissolved into a clear sound, the unmistakable music of the Arabs. An enchanting rhythm swept over us, as the sound of tortured stringed instruments ebbed and flowed. Joyous and plaintive; passionate, seductive. Unashamed of itself, it stirred, deep beneath the skin.
Through half-closed eyes, I watched the Bedouin and the child. Caught up in the unsettling music, she began to struggle against his fatherly embrace until, like water through a broken dam, she poured across his lap. A spark of grace seemed to pass through her as her toes touched the floor.
She began to dance, with the old man watching her in simple adoration. She spread her small arms softly to her sides, first one, then the other. In perfect time with the warming rhythm, her hips began to rise and fall, a child’s parody of adult sensuality. The movement, small and tentative at first, grew with the music, and she scanned the crowd for admiring faces. She saw my drowsy smile, and laughed.
The door opened suddenly at the end of the coach, and a portly, middle-aged Pakistani emerged from the din. He hopped and stumbled into the aisle with his carton of refreshments pressed against a half-raised thigh. His young Sri Lankan assistant followed, fighting with the access door behind them and muttering under his breath. In a tightly swung arc, the carton’s weight brought the vendor to what should have been his first customer, an urbane Saudi gentleman immaculately attired in Biblical polyester. But the gentleman recoiled as the carton of stock landed with an assertive thud on his armrest. At the same time, the assistant lost his battle with the door and plowed into his supervisor, who in turn thrust the carton onto the hapless passenger’s spotless white robe.
The Saudi glared at the filthy container pinning him to his seat. His anger surfaced a moment later, and rumbled. The Sri Lankan’s dark eyes flitted nervously among the passengers. I looked away, unable to cope with Laurel and Hardy in third-world translation. Once again, I let the desert, the train, and the music lull me to complacency.
“Hi! Hoe are you? Fine? Fine? Hoe are you?” The vendor seized my hand and shook it vigorously, with an engaging, crooked smile across perfectly straight teeth.
“I’m fine. Fine…thank you…and how are you doing…this weekend?” My voice bounced along above our locked and bobbing hands. I struggled out of my stupor and tried not to stare at the fascinating stains on his once-white shirt. “What happened to the fast train?” I asked, reclaiming my hand.
A muddled cloud dampened his sparkle. He looked down at the largest stain, disoriented.
“I thought they were going to put on a fast train to Riyadh,” I explained. “Sometime this week, wasn’t it?”
“Fast? Train? No. No fast train. Ah, yes! Apter one month, fast train apter one month.” His tone was more authoritative than it needed to be.
“Oh, it’s a month now, is it? That’ll be some time before the Second Coming, I guess.” I tugged absently at loose threads, winning my battle with guilt. This was my time for soaking up the Kingdom, for peaceful contemplation. Society and manners would just have to wait; school, in short, was out.
“Fast train. Apter one month. New. All new. Different. All new and different.” Each word was a scaled mountain. I gestured that I had no need of refreshments, he echoed a few good-byes, and I waved foolishly, immediately regretting my lack of Judeo-Christian charity.
The large man shouldered his wares and pushed on, with his assistant trailing meekly behind him. After the dark perma-pressed trousers ambled out of sight, a handful of coins clinked against the seat’s metal parts. They came to a muffled landing on the threadbare carpet that ran the full length of the coach. The Sri Lankan’s square shoulders fell to the floor, and his bony hands darted frantically across the wine-colored runner silently retrieving the coins. With each movement of his lean back, printed flowers danced on his silk shirt against the glaring overhead light.
Then the music stopped.
The silent backwash was instantly flooded with train clatter and conversation in half a dozen tongues. With the little dancer cuddled on his lap, the old Bedouin turned a deeply furrowed, desert-worn face to the rear of the coach. He stared expectantly at a small space where seats had been removed to create a place for prayer. His heavily brilliantined head of jet-black hair tossed a pungent, sweet scent into the lingering bouquet of gamy chicken and spice.
Beyond the polished hair, a lithe Saudi teenager sprang to his full, imposing height. As he stepped into the aisle, his head-dress slipped awkwardly to one side. Long fingers reached up to adjust the flowing, white sumada, setting it more securely on the embroidered skull cap. He repositioned the simple black crown that held it in place, then tossed the loose fall back over his shoulders. Tugging gently at the soft, white cloth, he brought it to a jaunty peak over his high forehead. Suddenly, he bent down over his friend, who had looked away from the narrowing horizon still glowing across the desert. They whispered mischievously to each other; then the towering youth turned to walk up the aisle and join the others for prayer. His right hand seemed to pull him along, swaying limply out in front.
As he passed, another young Saudi greeted my obvious curiosity from across the aisle. He had the face of a cherub oddly punctuated with a scraggly beard.
“You are Muslim?” His accent in English was soft, his manner gentle.
“No. Ana masihi,” I said, returning the language favor. Messianic, I said—a charming, primal word for Christian, with portentous possibilities.
“Titkallam ‘arabi?”
“Shweya bass. Adrus—I’m learning Arabic, but I still can’t speak it very well,” I recited in textbook Arabic.
“Lazim tisallim—You must be Muslim. You, you will become Muslim.”
“Why?” I said in English, stifling an indignant chuckle.
“Because the man is not happy.” Just then he seemed to take on a guru’s glow. “The man is not happy,” he repeated, “because there are many changes. Some are good, but together they are not good. Islam will help you to be happy. Lazim tisallim—you must become Muslim.” Judging from his unfailing grin, it had made him very happy indeed.
“But how do you know, in this country, if a woman is beautiful?” I challenged without meaning to, this time.
“Lazim tisallim. Then you will know.”
“Inshallah—God willing,” I said, to respect and to end the conversation.
“Inshallah,” he replied, and stood for prayer-call as two columns of black cloth floated between us.
I turned toward the rich ochre tones filtering through mottled glass, and counted five camels in the distance. They were running fluidly across the sand, their legs gathering, reaching, gathering and reaching. In my mind, I could hear the music playing again; and my own muscles flexed and relaxed, over and over, as I watched the camels.
The forward thrust in the neck, the supple flow. Legs gathering, reaching, gathering—
“It's a show,” I whispered to no one in particular. The dark eyes smiled at me again over the top of the seat. “It’s the Greatest Show on Earth,” I said, smiling back. I thought of black columns, and floated between the desert and the dream.
Thrust, flow, gather, reach—
Alhamdulillah.
Thrust, flow, gather, reach—
Praise God.
And I slept.
© Copyright 2008 by Cary Kamarat . All rights reserved.
Please share your travel experiences and impressions by clicking on the word ‘comments’ below. Alternatively, send your comments to the author directly at dinosasha@juno.com.
